If you’ve been tempted to move to a £99 a month website model — or you’ve been quietly cutting your prices just to get work through the door — this episode is a direct intervention.

Psst! Check out my new offer: https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/sparks-group-mentoring/ It’s a supportive group mentoring session for website designers and developers to bring their questions, roadblocks, ideas, and “is it just me?” moments.

Welcome to another episode of Websites Made Simple with me, Holly Christie.

In this episode, I’m talking about why the £99 website model isn’t the sustainable business move it might look like on paper — and what to do instead when the market feels slow.

We get into:

• How the maths of volume pricing simply don’t add up
• The burnout that comes with trying the model
• Why ongoing payment plans are bad news
• The hidden costs that slowly erode client trust
• What to do instead

If you’re a web designer wondering whether dropping your prices is the answer, this episode will give you the confidence to hold firm.

Come and find out more at https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk or email me at hello@websitesmadesimple.co.uk

Skip to the good bits:

00:00 Why the £99 website model doesn’t work

00:35 Meet Holly: Websites Made Simple

00:46 Who this episode applies to

01:45 The volume problem: you’d need 30 clients for £3,000

04:14 Burnout is baked into this model

04:38 Scope creep and the ongoing payment trap

06:32 Hidden costs and eroding client trust

08:34 Email hosting, DNS, and the chaos that follows

11:19 Content collection in a low-cost model

12:26 Hold your nerve: panic pricing makes it worse

AI is everywhere — and so is everyone telling you to use it for everything. But when it comes to your website, your plugins, and the work you ship for clients, the wrong AI shortcut can quietly become a serious liability.

Check out my Sparks Group Training for anyone and everyone involved in the publishing of websites, from copywriters to SEOs: https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/sparks-group-mentoring/ It’s a supportive group mentoring session for website designers and developers to bring their questions, roadblocks, ideas, and “is it just me?” moments.

Welcome to a special bonus episode of Websites Made Simple with me, Holly Christie. (Quick note — my podcast mic was misbehaving for this one, so the audio is not quite up to our usual standard. My producer Neal at Podknows has worked his magic to clean it up, so please do stick with it. The conversation is genuinely worth your time.)

I am joined by senior developer Rob Fisher to talk about where AI actually helps in web design, where it absolutely does not, and the security and stability risks nobody is being loud enough about.

We get into:

Why vibe coding is not a shortcut, it is a stack of technical debt waiting to break

How LLMs really work, and why they hallucinate when you let them

Why your prompt boundaries matter as much as your prompt

The chatbot that gave a customer 85 percent off a 10,000 dollar order

What the October 2025 AWS outage tells us about AI first dev cultures

Why AI tools are junior developers, not senior ones, and what that means for your business

Why vibe coded WordPress plugins are a house of cards

How a “safe” plugin can become a Trojan horse with one auto update

What is actually changing in WordPress 7

If you are a designer or developer trying to work out where AI fits into your business without putting your clients at risk, this one is for you.

Come and find out more at https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk or email me at hello@websitesmadesimple.co.uk

Skip to the good bits:

00:00 Bonus episode intro and audio note

01:18 Where AI fits in running a web business

02:34 Vibe coding and why it is a shortcut too far

05:12 The flip side, vibe coding as a learning tool

06:48 Tech debt: your vibe coded site is a liability waiting to break

07:45 What AI cannot do for user journeys and design psychology

09:20 How LLMs actually work, probability engines not brains

11:30 Hallucinations and the suspiciously short prompt

13:05 Prompt boundaries and staying on topic

15:10 What system prompts at OpenAI and Anthropic actually look like

17:00 The chatbot that gave away an 85 percent discount on a 10,000 dollar order

19:40 AI first dev houses and the October 2025 AWS outage

22:15 Microsoft layoffs and the AI replacement myth

24:30 Why generative AI is a junior developer, not a senior one

26:20 Vibe coded plugins, the house of cards problem

28:50 The WordPress plugin ecosystem and what it lets in

31:00 How a safe plugin becomes a Trojan horse overnight

33:15 WP Rocket, All in One Migration and the malicious update problem

34:50 WordPress 7 and the new AI APIs, and why it will not feel revolutionary

37:00 Block editor improvements and the abstraction layer problem

38:40 Final thoughts and how to get in touch

Imposter syndrome doesn’t care how good you are. It shows up anyway — making you hesitate before you send a contract, stumble over your words on a call, or scroll past someone else’s work and quietly wonder if you’re good enough.

In this episode of Websites Made Simple, Holly Christie gets honest about imposter syndrome in web design. Why it hits so hard in a self-taught industry. Why tech shaming on LinkedIn makes it worse. And what you can actually do to push through it, level up, and stop letting self-doubt quietly run your business.

We talk about:

• Why imposter syndrome affects experienced and award-winning designers too
• The problem with tech shaming (and why the tool you use doesn’t define your worth)
• Why there’s a seat at the table for every web designer
• How to stay in your lane and focus on your own growth
• What to do when your processes feel messy or your designs feel stale
• How to push outside your comfort zone and keep developing
• Why you’re probably doing much better than you think

Chapters:

00:00 Imposter syndrome — it comes for all of us

04:28 When LinkedIn chips away at your confidence

07:35 Stay in your lane and look forward

08:20 Tighten up your processes and onboarding

09:30 What to do when your designs feel stale

10:45 Pushing outside your comfort zone

12:05 You’re doing better than you think

💡 Want Holly’s Sparks Group Mentoring? Find out more here: https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk/sparks-group-mentoring/

🌐 Website: https://websitesmadesimple.co.uk

📧 Email: hello@websitesmadesimple.co.uk

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollycchristie/